


Tidings

by LaVieEnRose



Series: The One Where Justin Loses His Hearing [69]
Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Christmas, Chronic Illness, Deaf Character, Disability, Domestic Fluff, M/M, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 19:17:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16414319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaVieEnRose/pseuds/LaVieEnRose
Summary: Brian and Justin come home for Christmas in the aftermath of "Miranda," with news.





	Tidings

Hunter was staying with his girlfriend in Chicago for Christmas, which was a fucking blow, but at least we were getting Brian and Justin. Usually when they come to town they stay at Jennifer's, or sometimes Mel and Lindz's, but Jennifer's place is small and Justin's scary sister Molly was home too, and Lindsay was having her studio redone so their place was kind of a disaster. We spent December 23rd vacuuming and picking up Ivy's toys just for her to stubbornly put them back exactly where they were. Ben walked into the living room a little after six, hanging up the phone. “That was Brian,” he said. “They're dropping off Molly and they're going to say hi to Jennifer, then they'll be here.”

I was at Ivy's play table, helping her draw buttons on her snowman picture. “You ready to see Uncle Brian and Uncle Justin?” I asked her.

“Yeah,” she said. “Do they have presents?”

Ben laughed and kissed the top of her head.

I was looking forward to seeing them; all the shit that had happened to Justin the past few weeks was fucking scary, and I'd just feel better once I could put my hands on him and see he was okay, not to mention talk to Brian and find out how he was actually dealing with this whole mess. Every time we'd talked he'd seemed kind of...edgy, so I was ready for Brian at his Brianest.

He was in his version of a good mood when they got here, though. He smirked at our Christmas decorations and gave me a sloppy kiss while Ben hugged Justin. **You look great,** Ben said to him. **I like the hair.**

**Yeah, I like to give Brian something to grab.**

Brian ruffled Ivy's hair, and Justin wrinkled his nose at me with a smile and held out his arms. I hugged him and kissed his cheek. **We missed you,** I said to him.

**We missed you too. New York's awfully quiet without you all.**

**Oh, you proud of that joke?**

He grinned. **Yeah.**

 **How's your mom?** Ben asked, kissing Justin's cheek.

“She's good. She's all verklmept about Molly's nose being crooked now.”

 **What happened to Molly?** I said.

“Oh, uh, intramurals at school. She broke her nose.”

 **Jennifer's being dramatic,** Brian said. **I broke my nose once, I lived.**

 **When did you break your nose?** I said.

 **Last year,** Brian said, catching Justin in a brief headlock. **Justin punched me in the face.**

“He deserved it, he was in my way,” Justin said. 

Brian snickered, then rolled his eyes at our confusion. **He caught me with his elbow. He was not conscious at the time.**

Ben suggested something for dinner, Justin negotiated, and before long we were all in the kitchen slicing vegetables and getting udon boiled for a stir fry. Justin helped Ivy up on her stool and had her help him wash peppers in the sink.

“This one's called a green pepper,” he said to her. “Makes sense, huh? So what do you think this one is?”

“A red pepper?”

“Yep! Do you know the sign for red?”

She did it; we picked a preschool for her that teaches a little bit of sign language, and we work on it here with her too sometimes. Not as much as we should.

Justin beamed. “Perfect! And this one's a bell pepper, see how it's shaped?”

Brian leaned against the counter, watching them with a smile he couldn't quite hide. Ben came up behind Ivy and kissed the top of her head.

Ivy said, “Justin, your voice sounds funny.”

Ben and I winced, and Justin looked up at Brian for a translation. “No, don't...” I said.

Brian laughed. **He knows his voice is funny,** he said, and he signed it to Justin.

Justin said, “That's because I can't hear what my voice sounds like! Do you want to try it?”

She nodded, and Justin nodded to Brian, and Brian came behind Ivy and put his hands over her ears. She squealed.

 **Hi, Ivy,** Justin signed to her. Her sign name is an **I** snaking upwards, like ivy going up a wall. 

**Hi, Justin,** she said.

Brian laughed and took his hands off Ivy's ears. “You have to say it out loud, kid. That's the point.”

“Oh!” she said, and when he put his ears back she said, “Hi, Justin!” and her eyes got all wide. “Hi, Justin!” she shouted, and Brian snickered, dropping his hands. “I heard it the second time,” she said.

“You're better at this then I am, then,” Justin said. Brian pressed a kiss to Justin's cheek on his way to check the stove.

We ate and chitchatted about developments, Ted and Blake's struggles with the adoption process, Ma's adjustment to retirement, Derek and Daphne's wedding planning. Brian did some interpreting, but mostly we made do. Justin's fine speaking out loud to us and he's really fucking patient with trying to figure out what you're saying, and I'm not as embarrassed to make mistakes around him as I used to be. Ben put Ivy to bed and I opened up a bottle of wine, and we sat around the living room and gradually the conversation drifted to what had happened to Justin at the police station. He told us the whole thing out loud while Brian watched, filling in gaps with a few signs when Justin got confused. “It's all kind of jumbled for me,” Justin said. “It's hard to remember what order everything happened in.”

 **It's so goddamn awful,** Ben said. **I read about it happening to Deaf guy out in Seattle.**

Justin nodded. “I feel really guilty all the time thinking about like...the people who don't have Brians.”

 **Just do more volunteer work,** Brian said. **That's what you always do when you feel guilty.**

 **It's true, I do,** Justin said.

 **Are you going to, uh...** I tried to figure out how to sign it. **Press charges or anything?**

Justin looked at Brian, and Brian said, **Say it out loud?** to me.

 **No, it's okay,** I said, and I just fingerspelled it, even though my fingerspelling's ugly as hell.

“Oh, no, uh...” Justin looked at Brian. “We decided not to do that.”

 **Seriously?** I said. I'd have thought Brian would have fourteen different lawyers on the case already. 

Brian reached to the coffee table for the wine bottle and refilled his glass. **He's got enough going on right now, he doesn't need the stress. Police and media hounding him and shit. That's how you get seizures.** He said it all really casually, but with that kind of look at me that I know means he wants me to shut up. 

“To be fair, just about everything seems to be how I get seizures,” Justin said, and Brian gave him a side-eye.

Honestly I couldn't blame Justin for wanting to just pull back and let this blow over, especially when you think about how many times he's been let down by the police, and how the media made a fucking disaster out of the bashing and didn't help him at all. I was just surprised that Brian was letting him drop it. But I guess it goes to show that at the end of the day, Brian's going to put what Justin wants—not to mention Justin's health—above his need for justice. Above anything. And God, as much as I wanted to see those policemen get what they deserved...fuck, it warms your fucking heart, right? Brian Kinney, stepping down for his man? Who would have thought we'd all live to see that. 

**So what else has been going on, Justin?** Ben said. **How's the art?**

Brian leaned back on the couch, looking smarmy. **Yes, Justin, how's the art?**

Justin rolled his eyes.

 **Ask them,** Brian said. **Get their opinion.**

 **I don't want to talk about it,** Justin said.

**Well, we have to talk about something.**

Justin pulled his legs up on the couch. “Want to do a test run for tomorrow?”

Brian raised an eyebrow. **Do you?**

Justin grinned. “Yeah.”

 **What's going on?** I said.

Justin turned that smile on us and God, sometimes I swear I don't know how Brian gets anything done. “You know our friend Emily?” he said. “She and her partner are having a baby.”

 **Oh, that's wonderful,** Ben said.

Justin nodded. “She's due in early April.”

So that was nice and all, but they were sitting there with these looks on their faces like there was more to it, and I think it dawned on me and Ben at the same time. We both pointed to Brian and said, **Wait, are you—**

Brian shook his head, his eyes smiling over his wine glass, and gestured carelessly to Justin. 

**Justin, holy shit!** we exclaimed, and we got off the loveseat and came over and hugged him and kissed him and he beamed and Brian nudged him over and over with his foot until Justin laughed and grabbed it. 

“Okay, I know you have questions,” Justin said. “Go ahead, ask the questions. God knows they're not going to be too shy to ask me anything tomorrow, so...prepare me.” _Prepare_ was a little hard to understand—Justin's Rs aren't great—and Brian fingerspelled it quickly, subtly. I don't think he ever has any trouble understanding Justin, but hey we're always having to translate Ivy's lisp for people and I don't get what's so hard to parse out there.

 **Does anyone know yet?** Ben asked.

**I mean, our friends in New York. Daphne. And my mom and Molly.**

**Did you sleep with her?** I asked, and Brian cracked up. I think he'd laughed more that night that I'd seen in years, honestly. He was fucking...illuminated.

“I did,” Justin said.

**How was it?**

“It was okay. I'd recommend her to a friend.”

 **Do you know the sex of the baby?** Ben said.

Justin nodded. “It's a girl. She's excited.”

 **Name?** I said.

“Emily says she knows but she's not telling.”

 **Which I think is bullshit,** Brian said. **He got to name Gus, I should get veto power here.**

“Emily didn't find that compelling,” Justin said.

 **It's going to be something weird,** Brian said. **She's such a weird girl. This baby's going to be named Halicarnassus.** We made him fingerspell that a few times before we got it, and I was still lost. Halicar-who?

 **Whatever she picks is fine,** Justin said. **It's her baby, I'm just...well, I don't have to explain it to you guys.**

I said, **So is the baby going to be...**

Justin smiled at me encouragingly. “You can ask. You think Debbie's going to be PC? Lay it on me.”

 **Is the baby going to be Deaf?** I said. **I don't know how that works.**

Justin said, “Sure, so Emily's Deafness is...” He paused and turned to Brian and said, “Actually this is a lot of English for me, can you—”

 **Sure,** Brian said, and he interpreted while Justin signed. “Emily's Deafness is dominant, we're pretty sure, since so much of her family is Deaf. So if she inherited dominant Deafness from one of her parents, she has a seventy-five percent chance of having a Deaf baby. And if she got it from both then it's a hundred.”

 **How does your disease play into it?** Ben asked.

“So my disease is dominant,” Brian said, but, you know, actually Justin. “So there's also a fifty percent chance of her inheriting that.”

“Would that cause any other symptoms if she's already Deaf?” I asked out loud, because fuck if I know the sign for “symptoms,” and Brian signed it.

“No,” Justin said. “The seizures and everything, that's from the bashing. Molly may have had one once but...we don't know. And nobody else in my family has them so we're thinking that's not a big concern.”

 **So if she's not born Deaf but she does get your disease,** I said. **She'll lose her hearing when she's an adult?**

“No, probably when she's a kid, like three or four,” Justin said. “I'm a weird case, they don't actually know why it took me so long to lose mine.”

 **Bad luck,** Brian said, which I figured was sarcastic because I mean...not losing it until you're an adult seems like pretty good luck to me, but Justin said, **Yeah, seriously.**

I didn't understand at that point why Emily didn't just adopt—I mean, adoption's great, look at Ives—if the odds were so great that she was going to have a Deaf kid, and even though I'd understand it more after everything that would go down the next day...I'll be honest, I still don't totally get it. I mean, I have three kids, and it just seems to me that when you love a kid, you want it to have the easiest life possible. I have a sick kid, and Hunter's doing great and everything but...God, I worry about him constantly. I don't understand bringing a kid into the world you know is going to be disadvantaged. It seems like you should give them the best shot they can get.

I figured maybe it was hard for two Deaf lesbians to adopt. Ben and I didn't have the easiest time, and Ted and Blake here hitting walls everywhere they looked. Maybe this was their only choice.

We stayed up for a while longer, thinking of the most ridiculous names Emily could pick for the baby: my favorites were Mercury, suggested by Ben, and no English name at all, only a sign name, suggested by Justin. Justin got tired pretty early—he'd been sneezy, and at first I thought we didn't vacuum well enough or something, but Brian said he was getting over a cold—and he headed to bed. Brian mentioned once that ever since that concussion last winter, Justin has a headache all the time. Literally all the time. I can't even imagine that, so I kind of just choose to believe that Brian's exaggerating. 

Ben had to get some work done on his manuscript, so he kissed me and said goodnight to Brian and disappeared into the study, and Brian pulled a joint out of his pocket and raised his eyebrows, and a minute were out on the upstairs balcony in the bitter goddamn cold, staring up at a clear sky and sharing a joint. And I thought back to twelve fucking years ago, Brian and I on a rooftop, and a baby. God, that was the night we met Justin. Twelve years.

Brian was just as beautiful as he'd always been, his profile cut by the light bleeding out from the hallway, a calmness in his face that never used to be there, and I knew it wasn't just the weed.

“I was expecting you to be a mess,” I admitted. “You'd been sounding really stressed on the phone.”

He let out a mouthful of smoke, drawing some of the cold night air back into his lungs. “It's never as hard as it's supposed to be,” he said softly.

I didn't know what the fuck to make of that, so I just said, “So how about this fuckin' baby?”

He smiled, just a little. “How about it.”

“Who would have thought. You and Justin having a baby.”

“Hang on,” he said. “Justin and I are not having a baby.” He always signs Justin's name when he says it. Two taps by your mouth, for that smile. “Justin is having a baby.”

“Oh, so you're not going to love it?”

He gave me an incredulous look. “Of course I'm going to love it, what the fuck does that have to do with anything? That doesn't make her my kid. Christ, of course I'm going to love Justin's kid.” He shook his head and reached for the joints. “You people and your fuckin' boxes.”

Whatever. Brian Kinney just used the word 'love' twice in one breath like it was nothing.

I said, “Is he really not going to at least file a complaint or something?”

“About what, the baby?” he said, fake-bored.

“Brian.”

“Mikey,” he mocked, and then he shook his head and looked out over the backyard. “I told you, he has enough on his plate. He doesn't need them trying to twist it around and craft some narrative where it's his fault. He's supposed to be avoiding stress, so...he's avoiding stress.”

“And that's fine with you. Letting them get away with this, you're just going to let Justin drop it.”

“He has to think about his health,” Brian said. 

“I'm sure you could talk him into it, I mean...doesn't he want to make sure this doesn't happen to somebody else?”

“Leave it,” Brian said, and that that was the end of the conversation.

We talked a little bit about plans for tomorrow—Brian and Justin were going to Mel and Lindz's in the morning to see them and Gus and Justin's brother Luke, who's about the same age as J.R. and plays with her all the time, and then we had our traditional Christmas Eve dinner at Ma's where they were going to break the news to everyone else about the baby—and after a while Brian's ears pricked up and he stopped in the middle of a sentence and snubbed out the joint. 

“What?” I said.

He turned on his heel and went back inside without a word, and I followed him down the hall and to the guest room. “Oh, hey...” I said, because Justin was balled up really small, taking these fast breaths, and Brian knelt by the bed and motioned for me to stay by the door.

Brian rested his hand on Justin's hip and shook him, and Justin flinched and flailed, and I wondered if maybe it was a nightmare, not a seizure, when Justin punched him in the face. Brian stayed out of his way this time and sat Justin up on the side of the bed, and Justin kept breathing fast, shaking his head back and forth. Brian turned the light on by the bed and signed a little to him, but his back was to me so I couldn't see what he was saying. Justin signed **yes,** and then **no,** and then covered his face with his hands, and Brian nodded and pushed his hair out of his eyes, keeping his hand cupped around the back of Justin's head.

I said, “Brian, can I get anything?”

He shook his head. “He just needs a minute,” he said, his voice calm. “He'll go back to sleep.” He signed **Fine,** on Justin's chest, and Justin took one hand off his face to close his fingers around it. Brian leaned forwards and kissed the edge of his mouth. He got Justin lying back down a minute later, signed something that made Justin laugh a little, and a minute later Justin was snoring.

Brian looked at my face and snorted. “Yeah, that's his superpower nowadays. Sixty to zero in three seconds.” He glanced at Justin. “I should probably lie down with him, we don't want him...y'know, yelling, waking up the kid.”

Because, you know, God forbid that he admit that he just _wants_ to lie down with him. I have no idea how Justin puts up with this.

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “I should go check on her anyway.”

I checked on Ivy—fast asleep—and then on Ben—practically asleep on top of his laptop, so I nudged him up to bed—and did one more pass by Brian and Justin on my way to bed. Brian was still awake, scrolling through his phone, probably answering a work email or two before bed. 

His head was propped up on Justin's chest, and the way Justin's arm was around him looked almost...protective.

I've witnessed Brian getting blown by three guys at once, but I'm pretty sure that's the most intimate way I've ever seen him.

**

Everything was normal in the morning. Ben and I got Ivy fed and dressed while Justin and Brian bickered about Justin never being ready on time and Brian never eating a vegetable. They left to go to Mel and Lindsay's and I went to the shop—I was closing early, but you gotta get those last minute Christmas sales—while Ben took Ivy to the park for a few hours. 

They were back and Ivy was down for her nap and I was already home from closing up the shop when Brian and Justin got home, shaking snow off themselves. **Coffee,** Justin said, shivering, and immediately started fixing some, and Brian kissed my cheek and asked me why the fuck I'd let Gus do that to his hair, couldn't he count on me for anything?

 **How's Luke?** I asked Justin.

Justin shook out a filter. “He's good. I wish his signing was coming along faster, but it's not bad. We need to tell Gus to sign with him more,” he said to Brian, and Brian nodded.

 **How well does he hear?** I asked Justin.

“I don't know, it's hard for me to conceptualize,” he said, and I couldn't miss Brian biting back a smile at the way Justin totally butchered the word. “He can talk one-on-one with someone without trouble if it's somewhere quiet, but he has trouble in group conversations or if he can't see someone's lips. And his grades aren't good, and I think that's why, because he's a really smart kid.”

 **I've been reading about...how do you sign it? What he has?** Ben said, taking out sandwich supplies for lunch.

“Cochlear implants?” Justin said. “That...depends on how you feel about them. Some people just do **CI,** like this, that's neutral. Or you can do it all gently with two fingers, if you like them...or there's this.” He curved two fingers in hooks and smacked them behind his ear. “Like a snakebite.”

 **Deafies are vivid,** Brian said. **Ask him how to say abortion.**

Ben said, **Yeah, I was reading that the Deaf community is really against the implants?**

Justin made an _ehhh_ face. “It's not that clear cut. It's more the attitude around it than the device itself. I probably would have gotten one if I'd been a candidate.”

 **But you're glad you didn't, right?** I said. 

Brian watched Justin.

“I don't know,” Justin said. “I guess so, since I probably never would have bothered learning to sign and making my Deaf friends if I'd gotten one. And that's the problem, is people get CIs, babies get them, and then the parents decide okay, that's it, they're fixed now, and instead they have a kid who's struggling to keep up in the hearing world but doesn't get all the positives of being Deaf. He's just nowhere. But if I could get one now, with no risks, and still get to keep signing and have everything I have now? Yeah, I'd consider it.”

 **I didn't know that,** Brian said.

Justin shrugged a little. “It's not like it matters.”

**True.**

“But I know who I am,” Justin said. “I know that I'm Deaf even if I get some sound back. It would just...make life a little easier. It wouldn't change who I am. So I mean...I don't have as much of a problem with them as a lot of Deaf people. But I grew up hearing, my perspective's different.”

 **So if it were up to you, if your baby's born Deaf, what would you do?** I said.

Justin laughed a little, and poured some coffee. “Not up to me.”

**But if it were.**

“I don't know. I'd definitely consider it. But that baby would still be growing up signing, going to Deaf school, knowing its history, knowing that it's Deaf. If it gets all that and it can hear enough to be safer...I don't know. Sounds like the best of both worlds.” He sipped his coffee. “But it's not breaking my heart that we're not doing it.”

 **Emily would never consider it?** Ben asked, and Justin and Brian both laughed.

“Emily is third-generation Deaf,” Justin said. “Emily wouldn't speak out loud if you put a gun to her head. She puts the pride in Deaf pride. And the Deaf.”

I shook my head a little, and I swear I was trying to be subtle, but Justin so caught me.

“Aw, come on,” he said. “It's nice to be Deaf! I promise.”

 **Yeah, I know,** I said, even though I didn't, really. **And I get Emily wanting to have her own kid, but she really wants a Deaf kid? Like...if she could choose?**

Justin nodded, and Brian said, **I'd want a Deaf kid. I'm thinking of doing something to Gus.**

Justin ignored him and we started making sandwiches. “Most people want kids like them,” Justin said after a minute. “Mel wanted Jewish kids, Daph and Derek want a black kid. It's...yeah, it's a harder life, but you're passing down culture, history, richness. It's harder, but it's fuller.”

 **I mean, that's the same as being gay, though,** I said. **And I don't care if my kids are gay.**

Justin thought about that. “That's different, I think. Being gay is something everyone kind of does alone at first, and then you find your people. It's not passed on, it's not family.”

 **But your family isn't Deaf,** Michael said. **I mean, except for Luke.**

“Again.” Justin spread mustard on a slice of bread. “This is about Emily, not me.”

 **The kid would still be in the Deaf community though, right?** Ben said. **Even if it was hearing?**

Justin looked at Brian. “You want to take this one?”

 **It's not the same,** Brian said. **You're in, but...it's not the same.**

 **You'll always be Deaf to me,** Justin said, and Brian swatted him on the ass.

 **I just...** I started, and Brian said, **Oh, Christ, Michael, give it a rest.**

Justin held up his hand. **It's okay. What is it?**

 **I just don't know why you'd choose to bring a kid into the world who's going to definitely have a harder life,** I said. 

Justin leaned back against the counter. “Disabled people don't wish that we weren't born,” he said. “I think people get the idea that...we're taking this hypothetical kid who could be abled and choosing to have it be disabled instead, or something. But this baby's either going to exist as a disabled person or it's not going to exist at all. That's the choice, not abled or disabled. Disabled or nothing.” He smiled a little, eyes on Brian. “We like being alive.”

Brian stuck his tongue in his cheek.

**

Brian wanted to drive separately to Ma's, but Ben said it was wasteful and Justin said he didn't mind riding bitch between between Brian and Ivy's carseat, so he was overruled and we piled into the SUV and headed over for Christmas Eve dinner. Ben was driving, and Ivy was reading her sheep book, and Brian and Justin were having some signed conversation that seemed _way_ to small and fast to even be real. I wasn't catching a damn thing, but they were cracking each other up with whatever it was. Justin rested his head against the seat and just kind of looked at Brian, all this warmth in his eyes, and Brian scrunched up his nose and signed something that made Justin laugh and hide his face in his hands.

Jesus Christ. And it kind of occurred to me then...God, when was the last time I'd been around these two when there wasn't some kind of crisis happening? Nobody tells you about the day-to-day stuff, so you kind of fill in the blanks yourself, and I don't know. Most of the updates I get from up there are crisis and sickness and tragedy and I guess that's just how I've filled in the blanks of what I wasn't seeing. More of the same. I'd turned Brian into this sainted hero, Justin into this tortured martyr but...I mean not to get to Ma about it, but around all the drama, Christ, were they just fucking flirting with each other all the time?

And then, of course, we got some drama, because a mile or two away from Mom's, lights started flashing in the rearview and I heard a siren chirp.

“Fuck,” I said, while Ben pulled over. “Were you speeding?”

“No, it's that damn taillight. I told you we should have gotten it fixed.”

I turned around to check on Ivy as Ben parked the car. She was fine, but Justin had a death grip on Brian's hand, and they weren't laughing any more.

 **Don't sign,** Brian said to him, small. **No sudden moves.**

**I know.**

I started to ask Justin if he was okay, but Brian snapped, “Don't sign, just turn around,” so I did. But I caught Justin's eye in the rearview and mouthed, “It's okay,” and he nodded a little. God, I couldn't even imagine how freaky this must be for him. He was squeezing the fucking life out of Brian back there and what, you think I blamed him?

The cop walked up to Ben's window and told us about the taillight and asked for Ben's license. Justin was watching him intently, and Brian's hand that Justin wasn't gripping was rested on Justin's knee, signing **OK OK OK** over and over.

“Hi!” Ivy said from her carseat, and the officer flashed her a smile before he turned back to Ben. 

“Could I see your license and registration, please?” he said, and Ben handed them over, and the officer signed his flashlight on the license and said, “Novotny-Bruckner? As in Debbie Novotny?”

“That's my mother-in-law,” Ben said. And, of course, the chief of police's wife, and this guy knew it.

He handed back the license and said, “Get that taillight fixed, all right?”

“Yes sir,” Ben said. “Merry Christmas.”

“To yours as well,” he said, and he went back to his car.

“We are getting that fixed on Monday,” Ben said to me.

“Yeah, yeah.” I looked into the backseat to check on Justin. He looked okay, but Brian was still holding his hand.

 **See?** Justin said to him. **It's okay.**

Oh.

**

We got to Ma's, and everyone immediately pounced all over Brian and Justin and covered them in hugs and kisses and generally ignored me and Ben, but Ma, as always, greeted Ivy like she hadn't seen her in years, even though she watches her three times a week, and then Ivy ran off to follow JR around, like always. I said hi to Molly and to Jennifer, who I hadn't seen in a couple weeks, and Mom fussed over Justin and said he looked skinny and ushered everyone in to eat. We all crowded around the living room, sitting on the floor and piled on the couch and in mismatched chairs, just the way it always is when there's this many of us. I wondered if Emily and her partner and the baby would be here next year. 

Justin and Brian maybe thought they'd wait for a lull in the conversation to announce it, or something, but of course that never came. Everyone was having conversation on top of conversation, some signed, most not, and Justin kept looking back and forth between people trying to follow what was going on. Eventually Brian waved his hands above his head until people looked over and said, **Justin has an announcement to make.**

“What was that?” about half of us mumbled, and the other half jumped on top of each other to translate it. 

**Will you interpret?** Justin asked Brian.

**You don't want to speak?**

Justin shook his head.

**Yeah, okay. Go ahead.**

Justin signed, and Brian said, “My friend Emily and her partner are expecting a baby, and I'm the father.”

Everyone kind of erupted with “Brian, that's great!” and Brian rolled his eyes so far they almost fell out of his head.

 **Not me, Brian,** he said. **Christ, I'm interpreting. Justin. Justin is the father.**

 **Still counts!** Gus said. **Still mine, I call it.** He rested his chin on Justin's knee and looked up at him plaintively. **Tell me it's a boy.**

Justin wrinkled his nose, and Gus groaned and banged his forehead against Justin's leg. Justin laughed and put his hand in Gus's hair.

Lindsay said, “And the baby's...healthy?” Brian captured the pause in his interpretation.

 **Well, she's negative four months old,** Justin said, while Brian spoke. **But yeah, everything looks fine. She's even measuring a little big for her age.**

Carl said, “Emily's partner, is he, uh,”

Brian fingerspelled, **he** to Justin.

“She,” Justin said. “Gwen.”

Melanie high-fived Lindsay.

“Is she hearing?” Carl asked.

Justin watched Brian and shook his head.

“How does that work exactly?” Ted said. “Like...how do you know if it's crying?”

 **They make baby monitors that flash when they pick up noise,** Justin said.

“But that can't tell between the different kinds of cries,” Lindsay said. “Babies cry differently when they're hungry, when they're in pain, when they're scared...”

 **Deaf people have been having babies for thousands of years,** Justin said. **We make it work.**

Lindsay said, “So when will you know if the baby is Deaf?” 

**They'll do it at the hospital,** Justin said. **Right after she's born.**

“Is that something that you...that you and Emily are concerned about?”

Molly got up and left the room.

 **Um...we'll be fine either way,** Justin said. **But we're hoping for a Deaf baby.**

Everyone went kind of quiet.

Drew said, “Wait...you want the kid to be Deaf?”

“Most moms want their kids to be like them!” Brian burst, signing while he spoke. “This is not revolutionary!” He turned to Justin. **Sorry.**

 **It's okay.** Justin looked really tired.

 **Can I—** Brian said, and Justin nodded, and Brian started speaking while he signed again. “Did you know that Deaf people have hundreds of years of storytelling traditions? Story formats that don't exist outside of the Deaf community? Stuff that has been quite literally _handed down_ from generation to generation.”

“Okay...” Emmett said.

“So there's history,” Brian said. “There's tradition. There's stuff that you're born to inherit. Emily loves her life. Justin loves his life.” Brian looked at Justin. **Yeah?**

He nodded, watching Brian so intently.

 **She's going to love her life,** Brian said to him.

Ted said, **Justin, what about your seizures?**

“What about my seizures?” Justin said out loud, sounding exhausted as fuck.

**I mean, are you worried...**

Justin took a deep breath and, to my surprise, put a smile on his face. “She's not even born yet, and we have a whole room full of people worrying about her,” he said. “I think no matter what, she's going to be okay.”

 **I want to take him home soon,** Brian signed to me, small. 

**Yeah, okay,** I said.

**

We used Ivy as an excuse and left early, with promises we'd see everyone tomorrow for Christmas morning, and drove home. Ben put Ivy to bed, and Brian gave Justin a pill and stuck by his side on the way up the stairs. “Can you keep an eye on him for a minute?” he asked me, after he'd left Justin in their room. “I need a cigarette, and he wants me to call Emily and check in.”

“Yeah, he okay?”

“Yeah, the headaches get bad sometimes,” he said, while he filled a bag up with ice. “It happens a lot after crowds...all the lights and movement to him, it's like noise to us. Migraine trigger.”

“Not that Ma's house isn't noisy to us.”

“Christ, true.”

“I can't imagine everyone jumping down his throat helped either.”

“Yeeeeah, no.” He handed me the bag. “Bring him that.”

“Yeah, okay.” 

Brian went outside, and I knocked softly on the guest room door like a fucking moron before I remembered, oh yeah, and went in. Justin had changed into sweats and was lying on top of the covers, but he must have felt my footsteps because he opened his eyes before I got to the bed. “Hey.”

**Hey, doing okay?**

“Yeah, it's just a headache. Sorry, I'm an awful guest.”

**Please, we were all dying to get out of there.**

He took the ice from me and held it on the back of his neck.

 **Justin, are you okay?** I said after a minute.

“Yeah, I told you, it's just—”

**Not that.**

He nodded a little. **Yeah, I'm okay.**

 **It must be so fucking exhausting,** I said.

“What exactly?”

 **This,** I said. **Us.**

He was quiet for a minute. “It's just that I have to do it over and over,” he said eventually. “I don't mind the questions, but no one ever learns. No one ever listens. And then even if they do, there's always someone else. It's just...” He shrugged. “It never ends. I get really tired.”

 **You did a really great job tonight,** I said.

He shrugged. “Brian did.”

**Oh, and where'd Brian learn about Deaf storytelling, the history channel?**

Justin smiled and blushed a little. I started to go, and I was almost out the door when he said, “Do you think he's happy?”

I turned around.

 **I just...he seems happy, right?** Justin said. **Do you think he's happy?**

I said, **Justin, I don't think I've ever seen him this happy in my life.**

Justin nodded. **He seems really happy.**

**It is...stunning how much he loves you.**

Justin's face broke into a smile, despite the headache. “I know, right?”

**

And look, just in case you don't believe me, the next morning Brian woke up before Justin, and he was in the kitchen drinking coffee while Ivy bounced around and screamed about Christmas, and I was just going to ask if Brian thought Justin would be up soon when Brian perked up at a sound on the stairs, and a minute later Justin came up behind Brian and wrapped his arms around him, and Jesus, the fucking smile that flashed across Brian's face, just for a second, just for half a second...I swear to God, you will never see anything that beautiful. 

He's so goddamn beautiful.

Ivy was dying to go to Ma's and get the presents part of the day started, but we could all tell Justin was still feeling a little sketchy, so we stalled her by letting her open up her new art set so he had some time to kind of stretch and eat something and prepare himself. He ended up on the floor next to Ivy, helping her draw different kinds of fruits. She's really into that right now. And then at one point he said, without looking up, “Brian, tell them about the painting.”

**Yeah?**

“Yeah, I want their opinion.”

So Brian leaned back on the couch with a cup of coffee and told us about this painting Justin had been working on when he had his seizure before he got arrested, and how it was originally this really stunning piece about risk and trust and companionship at the edge of the world, and when you combine that with the fact that it was damaged by his seizure, that the actual canvas was ripped by his fingernail, it became this really visceral, scary like...tribute to epilepsy, to how everything can just go wrong in a second.

 **So you add in the story about the arrest,** Brian said. **And...this painting is a blank check. It's a career.**

“It's a career based on being a disabled artist,” Justin said. “It feels sleazy.”

 **There's a whole community of Deaf artists doing art based on being Deaf,** Brian said.

“Yeah, but I don't like that art.”

**Still, it's an established niche.**

“That's just it,” Justin said. “It's a niche. And something like this feels like...like I'm pushing this narrative about how sad it is to be sick. It feels like a step back for us.” He looked up at Ben. “What do you think?”

 **I think...** Ben started, and then stopped and looked at Brian. **Will you interpret? I want to get this right.**

 **Sure,** Brian said.

Ben said, “I think there's definitely the issue that the prevailing narrative of illness for so long has been that despair, the tragedy, the victimhood. And because of that, now we have the counternarrative, celebrating it, embracing illness.”

Justin nodded. **But then that's still a single story.**

“Exactly,” Ben said. “It's just as incomplete as only showing the misery, but we hated the misery storyline so much—and who could blame us—that we've convinced ourselves that painting a picture of all sunshines and roses is the ultimate goal. When really it's a stepping stone. So maybe you're beyond it. Maybe you can have those nuanced conversations when people ask you about it. Talk about the good and the bad.”

“So what's the goal then?” Justin said. “What's the narrative we're supposed to try for? What's going to feel right?”

“I think ultimately it's not to have to fit a narrative at all,” Ben said. “To stop being stories and just be people.”

Justin looked at Brian. “Is that what you think?”

 **I think this has taken so fucking much from you,** Brian said. **I think you get to take back whatever you can.**

Justin kept his eyes on him. “I'll talk to my agent about it,” he said. “But I'm going to file a complaint against the police department.”

Huh.

Brian sighed. **Justin...**

“I'll take care of myself,” he said. “But that's taking something back too.” 

**I...cannot have them hurt you again.**

He shrugged. “That's the deal, take it or leave it.”

**Damn it, okay. God, you're impossible. Come here.**

**No, I have to go get dressed for Christmas.**

**Okay, well will you borrow a warmer coat from Michael, please? I hate your fucking ratty thing.**

**Fine, fine.**

I went to the closet with Justin to find something while Ben put Ivy's new fruit drawing up on the fridge. **You know,** I said to Justin. **You're going to be a great dad.**

Justin blushed. “You think?”

 **Please. You can handle Brian Kinney,** I said to him. **I think you can manage a baby.**

He smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> I have the next SIX stories planned, aren't you proud


End file.
